Abstract
Detonations of military ordnance will leave various amounts of chemical residue on training ranges. Significant adverse ecological effects from these residues have not been documented except for ordnance containing white phosphorus. At a military training range in Alaska, USA, the deaths of thousands of waterfowl due to poisoning from white phosphorus ordnance prompted a two-decade-long investigation of the extent of the contamination, remediation technologies, and methods to assess and monitor the effectiveness of the remediation. This paper gives an overview of these investigations and provides the outcome of the remediation efforts.
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Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge support provided by William Gossweiler and others at the Directorate of Public Works of the U.S. Army Alaska, the late L.D. Fleshman and others of Range Control at Fort Richardson, JoAnn Walls and others at the U.S. Army Engineer District Alaska, and our many co-workers from CRREL, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We thank the Unexploded Ordnance Technicians and EOD Specialists who kept us safe during 23 field seasons.
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Walsh, M.E., Walsh, M.R., Collins, C.M. et al. White Phosphorus Contamination of an Active Army Training Range. Water Air Soil Pollut 225, 2001 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-014-2001-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-014-2001-2